In the summer of 1936, Janna, a young Dutch fencer, is sent away to stay with a long lost friend of her father’s, a German aristocrat named Egon von Bötticher. Deeply scarred by the First World War, the enigmatic Egon retreated to a country estate where he teaches fencing and organizes the Mensur - a bloody test of courage for university students. Her passions aroused by a figure as irresistibly brooding as Heathcliff, Janna becomes determined to uncover the truth about his past. What dark secret drove Egon and her father apart? Has she found love or is her lost innocence part of a score the two men have yet to settle?